It was one morning, as he sat at breakfast in his tavern, that a messenger brought Herries a note. It was written in a sprawling, uncertain hand, and was unsigned, undated and unaddressed. It ran—’A dying fellow-creature uses the privilege of his sad condition to summon Mr. Herries to his house. It may be that Mr. Herries will there hear that which might be of importance to his affairs.’ Herries turned the note over with an incredulous smile. Who in Dumfries could know of anything that was of importance to him? A little boy waited to guide him to the house of his correspondent. Herries thought that he would go. The mystery would help to pass an idle morning. The child led him a little way down the hill, and guided him to a small and humble street called, as Herries observed, the Wee Vennel. They stopped before a decent two-storeyed house, like an artisan’s dwelling of the better class. ’Here, my boy,’ said Herries, giving the child a shilling, ’can’t you tell me who it is that desires to see me?’ ’No. I was not to say, sir,’ answered the boy. He was a fine little fellow of about nine or ten, and as he spoke he raised his large black eyes—surely Herries had seen eyes just like these before—to the stranger’s face. The door was opened by a quiet-looking, young woman with a sweet face, but Herries did not then observe her with any particularity. She asked him gently to walk upstairs. At the door of a room opening to the left, she paused. ’You will be very quiet, will you not, sir?’ she asked. ’You’ll not excite him? He has not long to live.’ She had a quiet, controlled, and yet a very sad voice. Herries then noticed her wedding-ring, and also the fact that she seemed very near her time. She opened the door to the sick-room, and left him. The room was cross-lighted by two windows set in opposite walls, and by one of these, which was opened to the street and to the summer air and sunshine, was drawn a great chair, where someone sat, propped by a pile of pillows. A very pretty young girl in the rustic style sat near with an open book upon her knee, from which she had been reading aloud. She rose as Herries entered, and quietly left the room. It was Jessie Lewars, a neighbour’s pretty daughter, who helped to minister to the dying poet—an innocent type of much that had been the reverse of innocent in his life—a characteristic attendant enough. Not as yet had the faintest warning reached Herries in whose presence it was that, after eight years of silent hatred, he stood. Something of awe, indeed, held him, for he recognised by instinct the atmosphere of death. But he walked up to the chair in total unsuspicion, mechanically holding out a hand. And then a voice arrested him. ’Nay, not yet, sir!’ said Burns. ’Wait! When once before you met me, you held your hand behind you. It may be you’ll put it back again before we’ve done.’ Herries started violently, and his hand dropped to his side, for now he saw and knew his enemy.